It’s a cold and bleak place in winter. But every spring
Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge comes alive, bursting
with such a profusion of birds and animals that some call
it an American Serengeti.

Catapulted into national headlines as a result of the 2000
U.S. presidential election, the question of whether companies
should be allowed to drill through the permafrost in search
of oil remains a principal topic of political discourse
in Alaska. The debate is especially sharp among two of Alaska’s
native communities: the 260 Inupiat of the village of Kaktovik,
and their neighbors on the opposite side of the soaring
Brooks Range, the 120 Gwich’in Indians of Arctic Village.

The Inupiat, who look to the sea and whaling for their traditional
food, generally favor drilling. The Gwich’in, who rely more
on the 129,000-strong Porcupine caribou herd for sustenance
and view the refuge lands as sacred, side with conservationists
who maintain that drilling would harm the environment.

Most other Alaskans—including the state’s leading politicians—are
decidedly in the Inupiat’s corner. They see development
of a 1.5-million-acre (600,000-hectare) strip along the
coastal plain as a way of extending the economic boom times
that the state has enjoyed as a result of its abundant oil
reserves.

WILDLIFE CENTRAL

Hailed as one of the world’s last great wildernesses, the
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is a 19-million-acre (7.7-million
hectare) northern wonderland more than three times the size
of the state of Vermont. By law, all but the coastal region—an
area about the size of Delaware—is permanently closed to
development.

In addition to providing feeding and nesting grounds for
130 species of migratory birds, the refuge is an important
denning habitat for polar bears. Other inhabitants include
musk oxen and grizzly bears.

But perhaps the most spectacular of the area’s natural phenomena
is its role as a prime calving area for the famed Porcupine
caribou herd. The animals winter in northeastern Alaska,
the central Yukon and the Richardson mountains of Canada’s
Northwest Territories. Every spring caribou in groupings
of tens of thousands travel hundreds of miles into the refuge’s
calving grounds, where they are bothered by few predators
and find nutrient-rich tundra plants that provide nourishment
to calves and nursing cow caribou.

Another natural treasure thought to abound in the refuge
is oil, though just how much is in dispute. Government geologists
have estimated anywhere from 500 million to 16 billion barrels
may lie under the tundra, with a 95 percent chance of the
former and 5 percent chance of the latter.

OIL VS. ANIMALS?

Drilling advocates use the more optimistic ranges to argue
that the reserve could provide a million barrels per day—considerably
more than the United States receives each day from Saddam
Hussein’s Iraq, a volume that the U.S. Department of Energy
places at 585,000 barrels. They scoff at the claim that
drilling in this relatively small area would disrupt wildlife.

Opponents of drilling, using the lower estimates, maintain
that the reserve might provide less than a year’s worth
of oil for the nation—if it proves economically recoverable
at all. And in a recent letter urging President Clinton
to ban exploration by executive order, about 250 scientists
argued that drilling would indeed interfere with the web
of life in the refuge.

A great deal of money is at stake in the argument—and not
just for oil companies. Pressure among the citizens of Alaska
to begin drilling has increased at the same time that the
state’s current source of wealth, the vast oil fields of
Prudhoe Bay, has been gradually declining. The state government
estimates that the area’s output has fallen to half its
peak 1980s rate of about 2 million barrels per day.

Oil sluicing through the Trans-Alaska Pipeline has made
Alaska one of the most prosperous states in the country,
financing about three-quarters of the state budget without
any income tax, and an annual “dividend” for every man,
woman and child that in 2000 amounted to more than U.S.
$1,900.

First protected as a wildlife refuge by President Eisenhower’s
executive order in 1960, the area has been a political football
ever since. Members of the Alaska congressional delegation
and other Republicans have periodically sought to allow
drilling in the coastal area, while environmentalists—mostly
on the Democratic side—have tried to make the ban on development
permanent by passing legislation proclaiming the coast a
protected wilderness like the rest of the refuge. The result
has been a 40-year stalemate.

Eye in the Sky is a weekly series that brings you the story behind the headlines using satellite imagery, remote sensing, aerial photography, and maps. This feature is developed by National Geographic News with the sponsorship of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) and Earth-Info. Check out maps and imagery at http://www.earth-info.org.

 The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was first protected by an executive order issued by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1960.
 Biologists and conservationists have long hailed the northeast corner of Alaska for its beauty and diversity of wildlife.
 President Jimmy Carter signed legislation in 1980 that more than doubled Alaska’s protected area.
 The relatively small coastal plain area—about 8 percent of the refuge—remains subject to drilling for oil.

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WILDERNESS TOURIST BONANZA

Business interests and the state’s congressional delegation were outraged two decades ago when President Jimmy Carter more than doubled the size of national parks and wildlife refuges in Alaska. Critics predicted that not enough visitors would come to see the wonders of nature to offset losses from potential commercial development.

Today Alaskan businesses and politicians have changed their minds about the lure of nature in light of the state’s U.S. $1 billion tourism industry. The number of visitors to Alaska has tripled since 1980. Tourism has overtaken fishing as the state’s second-largest industry, exceeded only by oil and gas.

In national parks, where visitors have doubled over the past decade, wilderness aficionados such as backpackers and kayakers grumble about noise from helicopters and Jet Skis. The cruise-ship industry has mushroomed as well, with attendant complaints about crowds and pollution. One cruise line was fined U.S. $6.5 million for dumping toxic waste into the water, and others have been cited for violating air-pollution levels.

Alaska officials are now pushing for further tourism development. A 90-mile road through Denali National Park has been proposed, along with loosening restrictions on visitors around the falls in Katmai National Park, where brown bears wade into waist-deep water to snatch up salmon.